FABIO QUARTARARO
‘The bike is different. The only way to go fast is to adapt’
2020 MotoGP world championship
3 race wins: Spanish, Andalusian and Catalan GPs
Fabio Quartararo was the revelation of 2019 – the rookie that made reigning champion Marc Marquez sweat – and the mystery of 2020. When Marquez got hurt and Quartararo won the first two races he was sure-fire favourite to win the world title. But he only stood on a podium once more in 2020 and by the end of the season he had slumped to eighth overall. There were two reasons for this downfall: Yamaha’s struggles with the 2020 YZR-M1 and the 21-yearold’s nerves, the latter obviously turbocharged by the former. “Fabio was under great pressure, so he was nervous at some moments,” says Petronas Yamaha team manager Wilco Zeelenberg. “But basically, we weren’t able to give him what he needed to go fast. “The strong point of the Yamaha is brake hard, stop the bike in a short distance, release the brake and turn very fast through the corner. But at some tracks Fabio couldn’t feel the front so well. Then when he had two or three guys in front him he couldn’t use the Yamaha’s strong points because you can’t just run over those guys. The only way we can win races is to qualify on the front row, get into the lead and keep pushing. Otherwise we’re in the pack and we just go backwards.”
During the early stages of the season Quartararo seemed confident of riding around those problems.
“With the Yamaha, if there’s no grip and you don’t adapt quickly then you go two seconds slower!” Quartararo said. “So the only way to go fast is to adapt quickly and this is
something I learned last year. When there is no grip you have to change your style.” But by the end of the season he had lost his way “The bike is totally different to last year and I’ve never felt like this bike is mine,” he said at Valencia in November. “Even when we achieve great races I never felt that good on the bike like I did last year; that’s my feeling. There’s something missing, so we are not comfortable on the bike.”